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The Gospel Survives the Shadow: From Antichrist to Reformation | Jonathan Edwards · Reformed Thinking

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  Reformed thinking. Welcome back to the Deep Dive.
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  Today we are digging into a historical analysis of a time
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  that our sources describe in pretty stark terms.
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  They call it the darkest and most dismal day that ever the
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  Christian Church saw. It is a stunning claim, isn't
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  it? And we're talking about a really
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  long period of time here. We're looking at the era that
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  stretches all the way from the the rise of the anti Christian
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  system in the West right up to the very beginning of the
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  Reformation with Luther and the others.
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  For this deep dive, our mission is really to get at two big
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  related questions. First, what were the huge
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  schemes of Satan during this time that you know, led to so
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  much spiritual darkness? And then on the other side of
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  that, how did Christ actually uphold his true church?
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  How did it survive when it was under just this immense
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  political and theological pressure?
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  Before we get into the specifics, we have to understand
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  what the visible church even looked like at this point.
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  The sources really hammer home this idea that the true church
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  was in a state of great obscurity.
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  It was for hundreds of years. The image they use is that it
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  was practically hid from sight and observation.
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  It's almost invisible to the wider world.
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  And this connects right into that prophetic picture you see
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  in Revelation of the woman, the church having to flee into the
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  wilderness. That imagery, the woman in the
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  wilderness, it suggests this wasn't just an accident or
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  decay. It implies there was a kind of
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  divine permission at play. God permitted this period, a
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  time where Satan was allowed to, as the source puts it, renew his
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  strength and do the utmost that his power and subtlety can
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  affect. It's a it was a very high stakes
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  moment in the history of redemption.
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  So if God is permitting this, if Satan is allowed this much time
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  and this much power, there has to be a purpose to it, right?
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  It's not just random chaos. Not at all.
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  The whole theological framework here is that this was allowed to
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  happen to prepare the way for something even greater.
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  The scale of the enemy's work is well, it's the necessary setup
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  for a future, more glorious victory at the time of
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  Antichrist's final destruction. The dark of the night, the
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  brighter the dawn. Basically, yes.
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  It raises the stakes for Christ's eventual triumph over
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  an enemy that was given every possible advantage.
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  OK, so let's unpack this. If Satan was allowed to build up
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  his opposition, he wasn't just relying on random attacks.
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  He built structures, and our source points to two great
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  opposing kingdoms that he set up.
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  That's right. And together they covered the
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  entire territory of the old Roman Empire.
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  It was a strategy with two parts.
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  You have the Kingdom of Antichrist in the West and the
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  Muhammadan Kingdom in the east. A kind of pincer movement.
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  You could see it that way. The sources see the destruction
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  of both of these powers as the main event that comes just
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  before the Church's prophesied glorious times.
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  They're the 2 great horns of opposition that have to be.
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  Broken. So let's start in the West with
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  the system that was maybe the most insidious the anti
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  Christian Kingdom. Our source calls this the
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  masterpiece of all the contrivances of the devil.
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  And we have to stop and ask why. Why a masterpiece?
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  Because it wasn't just brute force like with Nero, and it
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  wasn't a philosophical attack. This is a system that took over
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  the very structure of God's visible church from the inside.
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  So the deception wasn't an outside attack, it was an
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  internal. Exactly.
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  The core of it was the appearance of holiness that was
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  masking this deep wickedness. It's why Paul in Seven
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  Thessalonians calls Antichrist the man of sin.
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  Not just a man of sin, but the man of sin.
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  And the whole scheme is called the Mystery of Iniquity.
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  A mystery because the evil is hidden inside the very machinery
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  of piety, yes. The end goal was to turn the
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  ministry of the Christian Church, which is supposed to be
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  for grace, into a ministry for the devil.
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  It was basically restoring what Satan lost when paganism was
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  officially overthrown in Constantine's Day.
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  So the Rome, the old Pagan capital, gets this deadly wound,
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  but Satan heals it by creating a new spiritually corrupt realm.
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  That's the idea Revelation 13 talks about the whole world
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  wandering after this beast because it looked Christian on
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  the outside, but it wielded this incredible worldly power.
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  It was this religious political hybrid that had all the prestige
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  of the old empire. Just, you know, dressed up in
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  Christian clothes. And that takes time to build.
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  That wasn't an overnight takeover.
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  Oh no. It was a very subtle, very slow
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  progression. It started almost as soon as the
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  government embraced Christianity.
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  The first corruptions were things like rowing,
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  superstition, all these unnecessary ceremonies and then
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  eventually the worship of Saints and setting up images and
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  churches. So you soften the ground
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  spiritually first. You do, and then the political
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  takeover gets easier. And we can actually track the
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  rise of the Bishop of Rome by the titles he started to take
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  for himself. It shows the whole progression
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  from a local servant to a supreme ruler.
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  We can. Yeah.
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  It started off simply enough. The Bishop of Rome was just a
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  minister in a congregation. Then that role became a standing
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  moderator, then a diocese and Bishop, then a metropolitan,
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  like an Archbishop and then a patriarch.
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  But these were still, you know, fundamentally spiritual titles.
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  But the real break, the real usurpation, is when he crosses
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  that line from spiritual leader to claiming universal and
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  earthly dominion. And that took two huge leaps.
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  The first was claiming the title of universal Bishop over the
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  entire Christian Church. Now this was fought against for
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  a long time by other bishops, but it was finally confirmed by
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  the emperor in six O 6 AD that centralized all spiritual
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  authority in one place. And the second leap was claiming
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  temporal power. So not just spiritual oversight,
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  but actual civil rulership. Yes, the source really focuses
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  on the Pope's claim to the power of a temporal Prince.
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  This is why you see the Pope's carrying two swords.
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  It was a symbol. It meant they held both
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  spiritual and temporal jurisdiction.
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  They had taken the keys to the Kingdom of heaven and while the
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  keys to the earthly kingdoms as well.
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  And this is where it gets, I mean, really wild.
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  The source says. The Pope claimed the very same
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  power Christ would have if he were here on earth.
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  He was called God on earth. That is the peak of the
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  blasphemy, the full expression of the man of sin, the idea that
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  any man could claim the fullness of power that belongs only to
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  Christ as the head of the Church.
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  And this it wasn't just rhetoric, it translated into
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  real, absolute political dominance across Europe.
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  He claimed he could make and unmake kings at will.
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  Emperors had to get their crowns from him.
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  Often in these really humiliating ceremonies, they
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  lived in constant fear of. Him.
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  Oh, absolutely. I mean, you can look at the
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  story of Emperor Henry the Fourth in the 11th century.
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  When Pope Gregory the 7th excommunicated him, Henry had to
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  cross the Alps in winter, stand barefoot in the snow for three
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  days at Canosa, just begging the Pope to to forgive him.
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  And that wasn't about spiritual penance.
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  No, not at all. It was a raw display of temporal
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  submission. He had to do it to keep his
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  throne. That's the kind of fear and
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  political power the papacy had. So let's talk about the tools
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  they used to enforce this excommunication, for start.
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  Excommunication was a political nuke disguised as a spiritual
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  act. If a Prince was excommunicated,
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  all of his subjects were instantly freed from their oaths
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  of allegiance to him. They were forbidden from obeying
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  him as their ruler. Which would just lead to chaos
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  and rebellion. It often led to the prince's
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  death. His own subjects felt it was
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  their religious duty to rise up against him, the source says.
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  Several emperors were deposed and died miserably because the
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  Pope used this weapon against them.
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  But the one that seemed to create the most fear, the one
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  that could paralyze an entire nation, was the interdict.
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  The interdict was maybe the most powerful psychological weapon in
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  history. It wasn't against one person, it
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  was a sentence against a whole Kingdom, and for the common
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  person, its effects were catastrophic.
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  All valid sacred administrations were just stopped.
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  What does that mean for daily life?
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  What does stopped look like? It means the entire rhythm of
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  religious life grinds to a halt. No valid baptisms for babies.
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  The dying couldn't receive their last rites.
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  No public prayers, no preaching. The sacraments were forbidden.
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  And maybe most terrifyingly, the dead could not be buried in
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  consecrated ground. So you can't even bury your
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  family properly. Imagine it, The church bells are
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  silent, the doors are locked and bodies are lying unburied or
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  just put in a ditch in a field somewhere.
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  If you're living in that time, the interdict means your soul
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  and the souls of everyone you love, our inner thesaurus calls
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  a miserable, damnable state. People greeted it like a storm
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  of fire and brimstone from heaven.
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  The control was total because it was based on the ultimate fear,
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  the fear of eternal damnation. The goal was to make the people
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  put so much pressure on their king that he had no choice but
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  to submit to Rome. On top of all this, this system
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  had huge financial and intellectual consequences,
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  right? Absolutely, the anti Christian
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  Kingdom was also an enormous financial machine.
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  The clergy with the Pope at the top just drain Christendom of
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  its wealth. They used church lands but also
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  this whole retail system of selling spiritual services.
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  What were the biggest sellers? Well, you could pay for pardons
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  for sins you'd already committed.
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  You could buy indulgences for sins you hadn't committed yet.
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  There were fees for baptisms, last rites, and the most
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  profitable invention of all, paying to get the souls of your
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  loved ones out of purgatory. A.
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  Concept that isn't even in the Bible.
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  Not at all, but it became the single biggest moneymaker
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  because you could profit from the living and the dead.
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  The whole system was built for immense organized wealth
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  accumulation. And to keep all this going, to
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  make sure nobody challenged it, you had to keep people ignorant
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  of the one thing that could expose it all the scriptures.
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  Intellectual oppression was key. The Bible was gradually and
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  intentionally taken away from the common people, the source
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  says. This was done the better to
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  promote the unscriptural and wicked designs of the Pope and
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  the clergy. And they had that cynical maxim.
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  Ignorance is the mother of devotion.
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  That sums up the whole strategy. The spiritual darkness was so
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  thick that real learning, gospel centered learning, was almost
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  gone from the world. Even most of the priests were,
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  as the source puts it, barbarously ignorant.
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  Their only skill was their hellish craft and tyrannizing
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  over the souls of the people. And this just got worse and
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  worse right up until the Reformation.
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  That is a staggering picture of total control in the West.
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  But like we said at the start, Satan wasn't just focused on 1/2
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  of the old empire. So let's turn our attention
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  eastward. Now let's look at the Muhammadan
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  Kingdom, which the source presents as the other.
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  Great foe. The one that took over the
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  Eastern Empire. This is the second great
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  structure of opposition. It was designed to oppose
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  Christ's Kingdom through military force, which was a
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  perfect complement to the spiritual subversion happening
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  in the West. And the prophetic idea is that
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  this system will be defeated at the same time as the anti
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  Christian one. So where does this force come
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  from? Tell us about Muhammad.
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  Muhammad was born in Arabia in 570 AD and at that time Arabia
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  was very fragmented religiously. You had pagans, Jews, some
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  Christians, but no single authority.
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  Muhammad starts teaching his new religion when he's about 40, and
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  he claims to be God's great prophet.
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  And his authority comes from the Al Quran.
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  Yes, he published the Al Quran and he claimed that it was given
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  to him directly by the Angel Gabriel.
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  He set himself up not just as a religious leader, but as the
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  head of a new political and religious state.
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  So what made his message spread so fast?
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  Why was it so successful? Well, he was described as a
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  subtle and crafty man, and he was working among people who
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  were, you know, very ignorant and divided on religion.
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  He first got followers through his personality, and by
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  appealing to their worldly desires he promised them a
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  sensual paradise. Sensual.
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  Paradise. What does that mean?
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  The descriptions in the Alcoran were very direct for the
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  faithful, especially those who died fighting for him.
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  They were promised gardens with cool rivers, endless feasts and
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  the company of beautiful virgins.
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  It was a very immediate, very tangible reward system.
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  And a stark contrast to the kind of abstract theology of the
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  corrupted Christianity was up against.
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  A huge contrast. And crucially, he built military
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  force directly into the religion from the very beginning, right?
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  So it's not just a belief system, it's a call to arms.
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  Exactly, he propagated his religion by force.
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  It was considered meritorious, a path to paradise to fight for
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  him. So conquest wasn't just
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  political, it was a religious duty that guaranteed your
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  salvation. And this expansion happens in
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  two huge waves. The first group is the Saracens.
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  The Saracens were the original followers, the people of Arabia.
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  Around 700 AD they just exploded out of the Arabian Peninsula and
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  devastated the Eastern Roman Empire.
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  They took over North Africa, Egypt, they pushed all the way
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  into Spain. These are territories that have
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  been Christian for centuries. For centuries, the Holy Land
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  itself, the North African coast where you had figures like
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  Augustine, all of it fell. The source connects these early
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  Saracen armies to the locusts you read about in the 9th
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  chapter of Revelation. A devouring, tormenting force.
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  The Saracen power eventually fades, but then they're replaced
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  by a second wave that finishes the job in the East.
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  That's the rise of the Turks. They were ethnically different,
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  but they adopted the Muhammadan religion and became the new
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  power. They started their own empire
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  around 1296 and immediately started pushing West.
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  And the final decisive blow comes in 1453.
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  A date that really did change the world.
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  In 1453, the Ottoman Turks took Constantinople.
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  That was it. That was the final end of the
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  Eastern Roman Empire. The Turks were now the masters
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  of the entire region. Which means the actual cradle of
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  New Testament Christianity, The cities of the apostles all fell
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  under this hostile foreign rule. It is a really sobering thought.
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  Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, all of them became
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  subject to the Turks. Our source suggests these are
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  the horsemen prophesied in Revelation 9, symbolizing these
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  huge, destructive armies. And what happened to the
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  Christians who were left behind the Greek church?
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  They were left in what the source calls miserable slavery.
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  They weren't always forced to convert, but they lived under
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  the Demi system, which meant high taxes, restrictions on
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  worship, and, you know, frequent barbarity and cruelty.
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  So their spiritual state must have suffered tremendously.
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  It was dire. They became very ignorant and
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  superstitious. Their leadership was
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  compromised. So Satan really achieved his
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  goal in the East through brute force and servitude, just as he
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  had in the West. Through deception and tyranny,
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  he had dominated the entire territory of the old visible
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  church. So we've established the full
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  scope of the darkness. Antichrist in the West, Muhammad
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  in the east. A truly dismal day.
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  But the promise is that the gates of hell shall not prevail.
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  Which brings us to the third part.
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  How Christ upheld his true Church through all of this.
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  This is the essential counter narrative.
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  It shows God's preserving work through that whole long night.
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  The Church, though it might have been invisible to the world, was
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  never actually extinguished. And it seems like the corruption
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  wasn't totally uniform from the very beginning.
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  The source says that early on, some nations actually pushed
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  back against Rome. That's a key point.
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  It didn't happen everywhere all at once.
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  For example, when the Pope first claimed to be the universal
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  Bishop, a lot of churches, especially in the East, but also
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  further W, they opposed him for a long time.
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  They refused to accept his exorbitant claims.
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  And the same thing happened with image worship.
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  Right. Absolutely.
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  The iconoclast controversy went on for centuries.
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  There are many who strongly opposed setting up images.
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  Generally, the closer a nation was to Rome, the sooner it
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  complied. But places like Britain and
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  parts of France, they held out for much longer.
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  They kept some of their ancient purity.
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  So there was some early national resistance, but once the
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  darkness really took hold across the continent, the preservation
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  of the church depended more on scattered individuals.
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  That's the second mechanism of preservation.
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  The source talks about an uninterrupted succession of many
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  witnesses in every single age. Even in the darkest times, you
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  had people in Germany, France, Britain who bore a clear vocal
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  testimony against the corruptions and tyranny of Rome.
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  And these weren't just quiet dissenters.
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  They were taking huge risks. Huge risks.
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  They included private citizens, ministers, and even some
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  magistrates and people of high rank.
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  They consistently spoke out against the Pope and his
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  idolatrous worship, and they pleaded for a return to the
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  ancient purity of doctrine. And many of them pay the
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  ultimate price for that testimony.
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  Numbers in every age were persecuted and killed for it,
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  and this constant stream of martyrdom was a kind of
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  spiritual proof that the true light had never been put out, no
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  matter how powerful the mystery of iniquity seemed to be.
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  But the most amazing part of this story, the one that
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  connects directly to prophecy, is the existence of a whole
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  separate community that kept its doctrinal purity for centuries,
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  hidden away in a natural fortress, the Waldenses.
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  The Waldenses are unique because they lived separate from the
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  rest of the world, and they constantly bore A testimony
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  against the Church of Rome. Through all this dark time.
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  They weren't just scattered individuals.
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  They were a community in the Voltois, the five valleys of
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  Piedmont. You really need to understand
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  the geography to get how they survive.
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  You do. It was a very mountainous
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  country between Italy and France, surrounded by the Alps.
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  The valleys were almost inaccessible, so they had very
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  little contact with the outside world, which was absolutely
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  critical for them to maintain their beliefs without being
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  corrupted. And this isolation is identified
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  as a direct fulfillment of prophecy, Isn't it?
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  The woman fleeing into the wilderness.
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  Precisely. The source identifies this
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  region as the place prepared of God for the woman that they
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  should feed her there during the reign of Antichrist.
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  That's a direct reference to Revelation 12.
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  This is the true church, fleeing into the wilderness from the
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  face of the serpent, being protected and nourished by God's
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  Providence. So what did they believe that
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  was so different from Rome? Well, even Popish writers had to
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  admit that the faith of the Walden Seas was the oldest
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  heresy in the world, which basically means it was older
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  than Rome's major corruptions. They rejected the Mass, they
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  didn't worship images or relics, and they held the scriptures as
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  their only authority. They just maintained the ancient
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  purity of his worship. And they're seen as the virgins
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  in Revelation 14. Yes, the ones who were not
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  defiled when other churches prostituted themselves, they
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  kept themselves pure for Christ alone.
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  Their doctrine and their worship were basically the same as what
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  the Protestants would later teach, showing this unbroken
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  line of scriptural faith. But that isolation couldn't
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  protect them forever. It couldn't.
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  For a long time. They were left in peace because
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  they were so hidden. But once the Romanist took
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  notice of them, the persecution was relentless.
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  They were attacked by huge armies, actual crusades, and
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  subjected to insatiable cruelty. For hundreds of years.
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  They were just barbarously massacred.
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  It sounds like a complete tragedy, but the source says
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  there was an unexpected redemptive purpose even in that
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  horror. And this is the amazing twist of
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  God's Providence. Many were killed, yes, but
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  others were driven out of the valleys of Piedmont.
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  They were scattered across Europe to Italy, Germany, France
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  and wherever they went they took their doctrine with them.
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  So the very act that was meant to wipe them out became the way
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  their beliefs were spread across the continent.
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  It was setting the stage for the Reformation.
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  That's it exactly. The persecutors couldn't
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  extirpate the Church of God. They only scattered the
• 19:19
  witnesses, which made sure that when the time was right, that
• 19:21
  seed of truth would spread up all over the place.
• 19:24
  And this leads us to the big public figures who show up near
• 19:26
  the end of this dark period, the ones who really carried the
• 19:29
  torch into the Reformation age. The 1st, and maybe most
• 19:32
  important, was John Wickliffe. In England, he appeared about
• 19:35
  140 years before the Reformation officially began.
• 19:39
  Wickliffe was an academic and he used his position to launch a
• 19:42
  powerful attack on the Popish religion.
• 19:45
  He didn't just question the Pope's authority, he went after
• 19:47
  the core theological errors. He was radical.
• 19:50
  He rejected transubstantiation. He attacked the wealth of the
• 19:54
  clergy, and most of all he started translating the Bible
• 19:57
  into English so ordinary people could read it, which was a
• 20:00
  direct assault on that idea that ignorance is the mother of
• 20:04
  devotion. He was teaching the same things
• 20:07
  the Reformers would later teach. He was of course persecuted for
• 20:10
  it, but he managed to die in peace.
• 20:12
  He did, which was a rare thing for a dissenter in that age, but
• 20:15
  the hatred for him was so deep that after he died, his enemies
• 20:19
  actually dug up his bones and burned them.
• 20:21
  It just shows how threatened they were by his doctrine.
• 20:24
  But his movement, the Lollards, they survived in England.
• 20:27
  They did. They survived in considerable
• 20:29
  numbers right up to the Reformation, even with fierce
• 20:32
  persecution. But just as important, Wickliffe
• 20:35
  writings were carried out of England, especially to Bohemia,
• 20:39
  which shows you the power of the written word to cross borders
• 20:42
  even in a time of tyranny. And that's where we find the
• 20:45
  final heroic witnesses who sort of bridge that gap between the
• 20:49
  hidden Wolden Seas and Luthers very public protest.
• 20:53
  Exactly. In Bohemia you had two brilliant
• 20:56
  men, John Huss and Jerome of Prague.
• 21:00
  They studied Wickliffe's books and they strenuously opposed the
• 21:03
  abuses of the Church of Rome. They were a direct intellectual
• 21:06
  result of that truth being disseminated.
• 21:08
  But they made a tragic end at the Council of Constance.
• 21:10
  They did. They were promised safe conduct,
• 21:12
  but they were arrested and both of them were at the stake for
• 21:15
  their beliefs. It's a chilling reminder that
• 21:17
  even as the darkness was starting to lift, the tyranny of
• 21:20
  Antichrist was still at its peak.
• 21:23
  But their followers in Bohemia were never completely wiped out.
• 21:26
  They survived until the great breakthrough of the Reformation
• 21:28
  finally began. So what does all this mean?
• 21:30
  I mean, our sources are painting this sweeping spiritual epic
• 21:35
  1000 years of calculated darkness with Satan using
• 21:38
  deception in the West and brute force in the East.
• 21:42
  But Christ's Providence never let that shadow completely win.
• 21:45
  It couldn't extinguish the light held by these scattered
• 21:48
  witnesses and these isolated communities.
• 21:50
  It really shows us the deep continuity of scriptural faith,
• 21:54
  this whole period where the enemy was allowed to build his
• 21:57
  power to the absolute maximum. It's not a story of failure.
• 22:00
  It's the setup for Christ's necessary and grand victory, the
• 22:04
  survival of true believers from the wall denses in the mountains
• 22:07
  to the public stands of Wickliffe and Huss.
• 22:09
  It proves that the line of scriptural doctrine was never
• 22:11
  broken. It was just waiting for the
• 22:13
  moment of renewal. It's an incredible confirmation
• 22:16
  of the promise that Christ's Kingdom will stand no matter
• 22:18
  what is thrown against it. So considering that Christ's
• 22:21
  victory over Antichrist involves triumphing over a system that.
• 22:24
  Deliberately took the holy. Scriptures away from the people
• 22:27
  and promoted ignorance. What methods must the later
• 22:30
  introduction of glorious times used to secure access to and a
• 22:33
  clear understanding of God's Word more securely than at any
• 22:37
  time before, something for you to consider as you reflect on
• 22:40
  the legacy of this incredibly dark yet divinely governed era?